Samsung Syncmaster SA350 Monitor: Thoughts and Settings

The Samsung Syncmaster SA350 monitor is a 21.5″ LED monitor with 1920×1080 resolution. I had always wanted an external monitor for my laptop and it has turned out to be really useful. This isn’t a review because I haven’t owned many monitors but I have seen enough monitors to say that this seems to be a pretty good one. I got this three months ago and I can honestly say that I keep appreciating it more over time: good color reproduction, nice brightness, good contrast. The movie high-definition resolution (1920×1080) I was hoping was enough to put applications down side by side and be able to view them and for my needs (basic text editing and internet-browsing) it works:

From my research Samsung is a real good brand to look into when looking at getting monitors. While I am not experienced in using a good different number of monitors, I can say that this monitor I’ve felt comfortable with. From previous experience of using other peoples monitors (schools, friends, and libraries) this by far has been the easiest on the eyes, very little eye-strain even when used for long times. One may comment that with a resolution of 1920×1080 on a 21.5″ monitor that it may not be the best dots-per-inch and they’d be right. It calculates as 102 DPI just above 96 DPI which is still oddly sort of a standard. That said fonts still read easy (take a look a above pic to see what I mean). For some unknown reason though, the Xorg server forced a 96 DPI on it when booting (haven’t been able to figure out why) that required me to find a rather lengthy work-around for.

Settings

As shipped the SamsungSyncmaster SA350’s LED monitor is very bright (almost stinging eyes bright) but isn’t calibrated at all. The settings need a massive adjusted as everything will appear washed out. Having been through photography classes and such I’ve developed a good sense in color balance. Once the settings are done right this LED feels really good (though I still have to get used to the the grey-bare tint LEDs give off). These are the settings:

I tried using your color settings and got a quite odd looking result. The monitor defaults to the 50/50/50, and you suggestions make the image extremely blue. Perhaps I am missing something, but I feel like I need a boat when my screen is so blue.

I tried using your color settings and got a quite odd looking result. The monitor defaults to the 50/50/50, and you suggestions make the image extremely blue. Perhaps I am missing something, but I feel like I need a boat when my screen is so blue.

I can’t imagine monitors being shipped with different defaults but obviously here they do. From my experience monitors are calibrated before they leave the factory but it is looking like that they are not here. Thanks for the feedback, I’ll take the settings down if other people have a similar experience.

For a giggle I thought I’d give these settings a try… hmmmm may work for his monitor but not mine. Like others I was a bit suspicious of the low contrast and high blue (in relation to the red and green). I’d suggest giving these settings a miss.

Any help for my problem. Plugged into a macbook and first 6 months or so had no issues at all. Now I’m plugged in and my screen is black. Have checked cable and adaptor for computer and that isn’t the problem. Any ideas? Thanks for the help.

jim, I have the exact same issue. I just found my not so old monitor dead for no apparent reason. same settings as the day before, but pure black screen on vga cable connection. anyone else having this issue?

after the update is done the monitor will turn off. give it 1min and turn it back on. image appears, it automatically adjust itself and all should be fine from now on. I suspect a windows 7 update for this issue, but I can’t confirm.

I had the same issue and chatted online with a Samsung Service Rep and was told to shipped the monitor to them to be fixed. Mine was under warranty and was free. Anyway, the fix by them was a firmware upgrade. I am not sure how to do that on a monitor but that is how the problem was fixed. Hope this helps.

And I’m using DVI to HDMI cable to connect to my geforce gtx 560ti video card on a Win 7 OS.
This set up is probably closest you can get to reach to 6500K color temp and 2.2 gamma standard for most windows monitors. My monitor model is Samsung SMBX 2331 similar to the one above.

I have a SA350 (27″) . I’m trying to set up the monitor parameters but some of the adjustment functions are locked. The menu shows a lock icon which I’m trying to unlock.
Anyone have an idea or suggestion?

I read that you can lock
(and unlock) most features of the Menu by holding that button for 10 seconds. Haven’t tried it myself…..i’m still battling the black screen issue and firmware update was not the solution. If anyone has other ideas feel free to pass them on :)

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